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Friday, April 29, 2011

I'm not complaining, it's all good stuff. But it's costing me most of my standard doodling time. I don't have the time to draw that I normally do. That's where this giant bird comes in. I drew it a while ago for a random project, and in an effort to post something five days a week...this is what we get today. An ostrich. It's not clever or anything, and I don't have anything particularly witty to say about it. I'll try to shake things up next week. Or...maybe this could be the beginning of a bird series. Either way.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

This is a drawing I did last year...it was a shirt design for a youth rally of some sort.

I didn't attend the event, but I know it was all about rallying the youths...and justice, mercy, and humility. I remember being a little fuzzy on the details as I was drawing it - I just had these three words to work with. So naturally, I went to my default drawing subject and drew a tree. I liked the end result, with the words coming out of the roots. It makes me want to draw more things coming out of tree roots. Like snakes, or spaghetti. Or legs. Or octopus tentacles. Really, the possibilities are endless.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I've always enjoyed artwork that starts with one item that fades into something else. Like optical illusions, I guess...I like that it starts with a paintbrush and ends with the lake. Either that's one teeny tiny lake, or a giant paintbrush, or perhaps it's a giant lake at the bottom but it's so far in the distance that it looks small...either way, I dig the zig zags. You might even day I dig dag the zig zags. But you probably wouldn't.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

I thought this would be cooler than it turned out to be. I wanted to draw a giant birthday cake - so big that it took a firehose to get it frosted. But I think in the end it looks like the firemen are just shooting water at the cake, and that just doesn't make any sense. Maybe if the flames on the candles were bigger, it would be believable that they were trying to put out a fire? But no, it's meant to be a frosting hose. You know, just one of those standard-issue fireman frosting hoses.

I drew this on a recent plane trip and as I was finishing up, the lady in the seat behind me said that her son had been watching me draw it from beginning to end and he would love to see it up close. So I handed over my sketchbook and gave awkward commentary about how the hose is a giant frosting dispenser...It's funny how this drawing seemed normal to me until I suddenly had to explain to a five-year-old why I was drawing it. And the truth is - I have no idea where it came from. It just gave me something to draw, I guess, which is reason enough.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Last week I had the amazing opportunity to visit Seattle with some of my friends. It was a wonderful week and I fell in love with the city. We stayed on Bainbridge Island, but we'd ferry across the channel to Seattle and spend our days strolling through farmers markets and shops and cafes and it was downright dreamy. I loved this trip in a way that felt slightly different than most of my vacations, as if I could belong in Seattle one day. I confess I don't think I'm really meant to be a southern California girl. I'm meant to live where the sky is cloudy and people wear Northface and hills are green and it's okay to not have giant sunglasses. I guess it makes sense that, even in SoCal, I've retreated to the mountains...

So anyway, I spent this weekend in Ventura with my family for Easter. The landscape is quite different from Seattle, with nothing but hills, ocean, and palm trees on the horizon. The skyline near my parents' house is littered with hundreds of palm trees. And this weekend I found myself consistently thinking that palm trees were the space needle, out of the corner of my eye. Habit, I guess...from this past week where it was always watching over me in the distance. As we trounced around Seattle, I liked that we could almost always spot the space needle on the horizon, and I suppose I keep hoping I can spot it. It's like a part of me still wishes I was in Seattle, and if you look for something hard enough...those palm trees start looking more and more like the space needle.

Friday, April 22, 2011

A little while ago I thought it would be fun to take up whittling. There's something poetic about the idea of sitting on my back porch with a block of wood, carving away and letting the scraps of sawdust land at my feet...okay, I know normally it's only 70-year-old men that think whittling sounds cool...but I wanted to give it a try. So I got some basswood (from Michael's, which felt very unauthentic of me) and started whittling. I actually enjoyed it a lot, but I'm not very good at it. And I got tired of having to vaccuum up little sawdust bits whenever I whittled inside...so my whittling career was very short-lived.

But this (below) was my one whittling venture. I wanted to leave the back and one side of it flat, but then have trees growing out of the rest of it...it never did turn out how I'd hoped. So then, after months of it sitting on my shelf (with me disappointed in it), I thought maybe staining it could improve the thing. So I got some wood-stain, and now I like it waaaaay less. The stain I had was way too dark, and it doesn't even look like trees anymore. All in all, not one of my proudest moments...but I'm still happy that I gave whittling a chance!

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

These are caricatures of my friend Heather's mom and Dad, which she asked me to design for their recent anniversary. It's drawn in the same style as this guy, and I must say I rather enjoyed myself creating them. Heather wanted the caricatures to be based off a young photo of them, which is why her dad has that sweet mane of hair. I like the cartoony style, and I keep meaning to make more little cartoon characters like this...but alas, I simply cannot find the time.

Monday, April 18, 2011

I always want to start post write-ups like this with me saying "Soooooo..." as if I'm just getting all my prefacing warmed up. Like "Soooooo...I'm not trying to say I'm like the Pharisees all the time...or that Jesus and I sit together like we're reading a children's book...or that I'm trying to preach anything here about who or what the Pharisees were...or that I know what the Pharisees really even represent..." The point is, I'm just trying to clarify that I don't really know what I'm talking about. I need to know that you know I know that. But sometimes I find myself reading Bible stories and thinking "Boy, they really messed up here" and then I realize that it's sort of a parable about how I mess up all the time. And I in particular am a huge fan of church and rules and churchy rules (yes, really) so I often find myself relating to those silly Pharisees.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

I was just thinking about space cowboys...and then it made me want to draw this guy.

In truth, I think my thought process started at James Bond and moved to Daniel Craig, which made me think of his upcoming film "Cowboys and Aliens." And that is what made me think of space cowboys. Logically. 'N Sync had a song called "Space Cowboy." They should have worn cool outfits like this guy. It's my version of what a space cowboy actually looks like.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Sometimes when I'm doodling, I just want to draw menfolk. Take this guy here, for instance. His name would probably be something like Flynn or Chance or Satchel, but he seems like he's always up for adventure. He's pretty perfect actually, complete with suspenders and a cool gun holster. And yes, I'm aware that he has a quiver of arrows but no bow. I know that doesn't make sense, but I've always had a thing for guys wearing arrow quivers. Right? Ladies? I can't be the only one. Remember Legolas?? He was very dashing. Anyway, my dream guy is perhaps a bit nerdier than the average girl's dream...but at least he could hold his own in a fight against orcs or tusken raiders. And he wears a watch. I like when guys wear watches.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

I sketched these out at work yesterday, trying to see if I could combine a climbing wall with the Lord of the Rings city Minas Tirith. That's right, you heard me. A Gondor climbing wall. What, is that not a normal thing for someone to be doing in a typical work day? Drawing Middle Earth recreation options? I would explain why this came to be, but it's just so silly...Let's just say we might be referring to one of our climbing walls as "The Wall of Gondor," due to a medieval summer camp theme. So I was trying to see if I could come up with a Gondor-climbing-wall sketch for the climbing wall "paperwork" we use. All in all, I think these look pretty ridiculous and I doubt we'll use them...but it was worth a shot. And it was a very fun moment in my work day.

Friday, April 8, 2011

That's right, folks! Tennis art!! Yes! I know, I know, I'm sinking to new levels of dorkiness. It's just - I've been playing tennis lately and I'm really enjoying it. I played in high school and really loved it, and then I just stopped playing. I stopped playing any sports, really...and I missed it. So, desperate to regain my sporty street cred, I enrolled in a community college tennis class, which has been amusing on a number of levels. But this week particularly, I was just so grateful to have tennis back in my life. I believe yesterday I was even quoted as saying "I'm on Cloud 9 right now about tennis" when asked why I said I was having a good day. And nerdy as all this may seem, it's overflowing into my artwork in the form of a big tennis ball heart. Throw in some obligatory birds and a tree...and you've got some tennis art. Classy!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

It's just a colored version of yesterday's post. Normally I try to mix it up a bit more, but yesterday I didn't have time to work on anything but this. Actually, that's not even true - I worked on three different art projects yesterday, but one was for work and the other two are super-secret artsy birthday present projects...It's not that I'm not creating any "fresh" art - it's just that it's all unblogable (new word?) stuff, at least for now. So thanks to all my other not-for-public-viewing-yet projects...this is all that I have to show for myself: color. But I have some growing hope in my heart that tomorrow I will have something more exciting to post.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Why "in the corners"? Why not in the middle of my heart, or on the side? I don't know.

But I like the plant. Turns out I like drawing vines. I kept adding more and more until finally I had to make myself stop and scan the image in or I would have filled up the whole page with leaves. I'll save that for some other time.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

﻿This one might not be very exciting, but gosh it seemed exciting at the time.
I recently flew to Idaho and back (more awesome than it sounds) and on one of my four flights, I got the whole row to myself. This has never happened to me before. Ever. I kept trying not to get my hopes up as passengers walked to the rows around me, but then...the airplane doors were closing. People were buckled in. And I had my own row. It was a magical moment. I'm 5'11", so I'm tall for a girl, and squishing into an airplane seat is anything but comfortable. I can't even imagine what really tall guys go through. Airplane seats are tiny! For three of my four flights this weekend, I was curled up in the fetal position against the window...but for that one miraculous quick leg of the trip, I got to sprawl across the seats, using as much space as I possibly could. And as trivial as this all sounds, I was so happy about it that it seemed to deserve its own drawing. To commemorate the flight that was. To remember that, if only for a brief moment in time, I was on an airplane with plenty of leg room.